I’m the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the Algemeiner, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Independent Journal Review, American Thinker, FrontPage Magazine, Jihad Watch, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, Jewish Press, J-The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, and many others.

Friday, March 02, 2007

No Evidence of Hate Crime in Alia Ansari Murder

As predicted several months ago at this blog, the Oct. 9, 2006 murder of Fremont Aghan-American woman Alia Ansari turns out not to be a hate crime after all. According to Alameda County Senior Deputy District Attorney Colton Carmine, parolee Manuel Urango, who has a long criminal record, was charged with Ansari's murder. As Carmine put it:

"The investigation is ongoing, and we're really not prepared to talk about motive. At this time, it's not charged as a hate crime and there's no evidence that prosecutors have that qualifies it as a hate crime."

This after community and Muslim groups used the occasion of the alleged "hate crime" to organize a "Wear a Hijab/Turban Day" and attendant rally in which non-Muslims (particularly women) were urged to don the respective head covering. Indeed, as of this writing, the main organizing group, the Foundation for Self-Reliance, is still playing up the hate crime angle.

But the story was fishy from day one and truth be told, it's still rather strange. Urango and Ansari apparently didn't know each other and apart from a random shooting, one has to wonder about the motive?

It's not beyond the pale to imagine that Urango might have been a hired gun. As I pointed out earlier, Fremont's Afghan community has been beset by internal violence, not to mention the sort of domestic violence against women found in many Muslim communities. And in 2002, one member of the Ansari family was shot and killed and another wounded by a fellow community member.

We may never know what motivated Urango, but isn't it time for all those who immediately cried "hate crime" and blamed the murder on "racism" and "white privilege" to retract their initial statements?

Instead, something tells me this false claim will be yet another in the pantheon of greatly exaggerated and in some cases, mythical, allegations of hate crimes against Muslims in post-9/11 America.

You may be interested in a little piece I posted on my website. The germane portion, I include here:

In July 1571, the Ottoman Turks, the Muslim superpower of its day, seized the Venetian outpost of Nicosia on the island of Crete after a siege. In order to secure the surrender of the city, they offered generous terms - the garrison would be allowed to evacuate the island, and the lives of the city's citizens would be secure. Under normal circumstances, they could expect to all be killed or enslaved.

The Venetians agreed; their leader, the governor Marcantonio Bragadino, who was also a Venetian senator, surrendered in a ritual ceremony to the Ottoman commander.

The reply of the Ottomans was to cut Bragadino's ears and nose off. This was actually expected, as it was a ritual humiliation.

What followed was not expected in light of the agreement reached - the garrison, instead of being allowed to evacuate, arrived at the boats to be promptly enslaved as oarsmen on Turkish galleys. To give some idea of how bad this was for the Venetians; they were the only power of the day that refused to use slaves to man their galleys.

Worse, Bragadino was brought out before his men, forced to wear the harness of a mule, and carry buckets of earth to the places where breaches in the fortifications had been made by the Ottomans.

Each time he passed the Ottoman commander's tent, he was forced to eat dirt in a ritual act of humiliation.

It did not end there - he was later hauled to the top mast of a galley, again in front of his former troops, then taken to a market square to be whipped publically.

The final humiliation was that he was hung up by heels and then flayed alive by the Ottomans - that is to say, his skin was expertly removed by an Ottoman butcher. Fortunately for his sake, Bragadino at last died in the process.

I am telling you this rather gruesome story because Al Qaeda thinks of these times as the good old days. It is their intention to re-establish Muslim power to the extent achieved by the Ottomans; we do not hear any regrets associated with the brutality of that period in history.

Back in 1571, the outrage of this maltreatment reached a fleet of Christian ships, led by Don John of Austria, and this gave their outnumbered force the impetus to decisively beat the Turks at the Battle of Lepanto, thus securing Western Europe against Ottoman expansion.

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I’m the West Coast representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. I was a political columnist for SFGate.com (San Francisco Chronicle online) from 2004-2008. I've written for the Algemeiner, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, Independent Journal Review, American Thinker, FrontPage Magazine, Jihad Watch, Family Security Matters, Accuracy In Media, Newsbusters, Israel National News, Jewish Press, J-The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, and many others.